Katie Zanbergen: [00:00] Hi, my name is Katie Zanbergen and I'm the community manager at the Forum for Growth & Innovation at the Harvard Business School. Here this afternoon with Bob Moesta, who's the president and CEO of the Rewired Group and one of the pioneers of the jobs to be done theory.

Katie: [00:24] The topic of our discussion today is tips for targeting non-consumption and I thought I'd start us off with a little quote from The Innovator Solution, which is "because the effectiveness of any strategy is contingent on the circumstance, senior executives need to look to the horizon, which is often at the low end of the market or in non-consumption, for evidence that the basis of competition is changing."

Katie: [00:47] In terms of the tool kit for a successful enterprise, spotting non-consumption falls under the theory of jobs to be done.

Bob Moesta: 00:52 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katie: [00:54] Bob, we're wondering if you could talk to us a bit today about how do we train ourselves to spot non-consumption and what advice would you give to our listeners? And why is it so hard to find it?

Bob: [01:06] Non-consumption is that basic premise of where people wanna do something, but they can't and so it's almost like there's a lot of energy built up to say, "Gosh, I gotta do this. I gotta do this."

Bob: [01:15] But there's some either anxiety or habit force or there's just not enough forward force to basically have them choose or they don't have access. There's a whole bunch of kind of logistical things as well.

Bob: [01:26] But what I would say is that from a non-consumption perspective, it's really about finding out where people wanna do something, but they can't. I have a couple of standard answers there.

Bob: [01:37] One is like hearing aids, right? The average person basically recognizes that they have a hearing loss of some sort and it takes them seven years to get to a hearing aid and so, this whole notion of they don't want it, they're embarrassed to have it, they don't think they need it, it's very expensive.

Bob: [01:53] It's all these different things and then, bam, they buy it. But it's a seven year long process, so to me it's like, how many people want hearing aids or need hearing aids, but actually don't actually get them?

Bob: [02:04] This is where I think Bose has come out with a new product called Hearphones and their notion is people don't wanna admit they need glasses, so they go to Rite Aid and they buy cheaters. They buy the plus two or plus two and a half kinda glasses.

Bob: [02:16] To me, it's like how many people want hearing aids or needs hearing aids but don't wanna spend the three, four grand to do it. Bose created this thing Hearphones that is $399 and it literally uses their noise canceling technology in reverse to actually amplify everything around you.

Bob: [02:31] And it uses a very, very low end kind of platform that they already have that they just basically built into an app. All of the sudden, you can actually have hearing aids that are actually amazing.

Bob: [02:43] I have hearing aids myself and they're actually better than my hearing aids that I have and they're actually much more helpful. Part of this is being able to spot it and back to your point about how difficult it is, is most people don't blame products.

Bob: [02:57] When people and companies go look for it, they look for people looking for where people are complaining about their products but the reality is most people blame themselves. What happens is you have to really be able to understand two things.

Bob: [03:10] Where people struggle and where the struggle is big enough and two, where they wanna make progress but they necessarily can't. This is actually a bigger kind of view into people's lives or your best customers and saying where do they wanna do something but they can't?

Bob: [03:27] That's typically where we start, so it's a very different kind of research than what most people do which is around their product and tell me about the best hearing aid you ever had. These are people that never had hearing aids at all. It's very, very different research for most companies to go after and try to look for non-consumption.

Katie: [03:44] If you're looking for the struggling moment, is that something that you're looking for in yourself? And also, in terms of, is it consumer behavior or what they're telling you through surveys?

Bob: [03:54] There's a combination of places. One is you'll see it in- If you ask about the three things that you hate about your current phone, for example, there are struggling moments there but they're not doing anything about it.

Bob: [04:04] It's like they blame themselves, like yeah, I just can't remember my passwords. It's those things where they blame themselves to say, well, no, I have a password- They don't even think of buying a password app that will remember all their passwords and the moment they get it, they're like oh, okay.

Bob: [04:17] Part of this is being able to realize where do people- And again, it doesn't have enough energy for them to go look for something. They don't even know something exists.

Bob: [04:26] Part of this is being able to understand what are they struggling with? How do we actually reframe it and then how do we actually then make them, get in their way so they know that it's possible?

Bob: [04:36] It's not just finding non-consumption. It's then activating non-consumption that is equally as hard.

Katie: [04:42] Okay, it's a process.

Bob: [04:43] It's a process. It's a process like anything else, but the reality is the low end of the market is where basically you can actually use technology and to be honest, take second- I'll say, recycle technology to go to the low end of the market because you're competing with nothing.

Bob: [05:00] It's like I have no hearing aid, so this is better than no hearing aids. Right? Same thing.

Katie: [05:05] In terms of other tips, what about this idea of recognizing over engineered products?

Bob: [05:13] Yeah, in a lot of cases, I always say that most people say they didn't buy a product because of price, but my belief is that typically it's that they only want it to do three of the ten things that you engineered it to do.

Bob: [05:26] When people are arguing about price, it typically means that you've over-engineered it and that there's opportunity to actually come in with a lower end product.

Bob: [05:33] Or where they have 20 features, but they only use two and so part of this is being able to look at, again, how people look at that product, look at their situation and what else they can use it for.

Katie: [05:45] Another tip that I've heard, which I'm curious to learn more about, is looking for petty law breaking or law bending.

Bob: [05:54] Oh yeah.

Katie: [05:54] Does that resonate as a good tip?

Bob: [05:54] One of the things that Foss and I and Karen Dillon, we're talking with [inaudible 00:06:00], I always think of most innovation happens at the fringes, so it's kind of figuring out where are the fringes of not only behavior but fringes of where people are willing to be criminal about it.

Bob: [06:11] Think of the people at the airport trying to give you a ride. At some point, they're willing to get caught. The notion of the low end of the crime side is literally where people are willing to figure out how to hack that around.

Bob: [06:24] My thing is Uber really is a way in which kind of hacking that notion of how do I actually get somebody to come pick me up at the airport even though I don't wanna get a taxi?

Bob: [06:32] It's that kind of thing. To me, it's like looking, where are the petty crimes? And can I actually figure out how to legitimize the petty crimes?

Katie: [06:42] That makes sense. What about this notion of finding either abundant resources or slack resources and how that relates to non-consumption?

Bob: [06:52] Yeah, in a lot of cases, there's cases where, especially if I can get resources at a very low cost because they're either excess resources- Like in Detroit, we have way too much land. The city is- You can find Boston, Manhattan, and San Francisco all in the city of Detroit and we went from 2.2 million people down to just about 650,000 people.

Bob: [07:14] We have more land than we need. Part of it is like how do we actually- And we need jobs, so how do we actually figure out what to do with that land and do something different with it?

Bob: [07:23] For us, we actually created urban farms around it. This notion is basically how do we actually take ample resources that we have and figure out what else we can do with it and how do we actually compete?

Bob: [07:33] We went to the airport and found out all the stuff that people flew in and then figured out how to grow it in the city, in greenhouses, one for cheaper and two to actually create jobs for the low end of the market.

Katie: [07:45] Wow, that's very cool.

Bob: [07:47] Again, examples of- Like if I have a lot of resources, how do I convert it? It's an innovation problem, so I don't think of it as just a jobs to be done problem. Or fall under the jobs to be done lens.

Bob: [07:57] It's more about how do I actually think about where is there pull? Where is there push? Where is there- How do I actually enable people to make progress through things that I either have access of or that they wanna make, they don't kwow it's there, they're struggling with their personal, that kind of stuff.

Katie: [08:16] Okay. In terms of really training ourselves to be on the look out for non-consumption, what would be your advice?

Bob: [08:23] To me, it really starts with I'm always looking for struggling moments, places where you're frustrating personally or you see other people. My question sitting in an airplane flying around is what's the thing that really pissed you off this week? Like, one thing that really bothered you the most that if you could solve-

Bob: [08:42] And people will always have something that's on that list to solve, but they usually end up blaming themselves like, yeah, I just haven't put enough energy to it or I haven't thought about it.

Bob: [08:50] Part of this is being able to collect those kinds of frustrations from either your current market or from competitive markets where you can actually go in at the low end.

Bob: [08:58] I'm always, always trying to find struggling moments where people care enough to take action on it.

Katie: [09:04] That's interesting. And where it comes to their mind immediately when you're kind of asking them that.

Bob: [09:09] For example, one is people will complain about how dirty the car is inside, right? It's like well, you could build a whole line of new products for cleaning the car inside. But it doesn't have enough energy for people to realize they're going to go to the aisle and pick it up and put it in the car and then where do they store it? And then when they clean it, where do they throw-

Bob: [09:24] There's all this other hassle wrapped around it. It's just easier to go to the car wash. They live with the dirtiness of their car because the fact is they can't figure out a solution but at the same time, the fact is that it doesn't matter enough to them that they're willing to go get specialty products to do it, right?

Bob: [09:41] It's that trade off between the two. Part of it is finding where there's enough energy that people will do something about it when they see the solution, but not so expensive that they can't do it. It's this operating window we're trying to actually figure out.

Katie: [09:57] Is that something you're trying to tease out when you're interviewing someone?

Bob: [10:00] Yeah, when you're interviewing people- So, I call these are what I would call little higher interviews and it's more like truffle hunting. It's literally digging in the dirt and trying to- Tell me about specific moments where they have been struggling and what else they can do.

Bob: [10:14] It's literally trying to find the energy and what they're trying to do about it and how much, what's the new outcome or the benefit they'll get from actually making progress in that space?

Bob: [10:28] It's not as structured as I'll say the switch interviews but they're equally as powerful.

Katie: [10:34] Interesting. We were speaking to one alumni of the building and sustaining a successful enterprise course and he said that in looking for non-consumption and for people kind of struggling with products that he would go onto Amazon and look at people who had rated something one or two stars and read-

Bob: [10:52] Yeah, exactly. Where people complain, exactly.

Katie: [10:53] Yeah, do you find that to be a viable approach to non-consumption?

Bob: [10:57] I do. My thing is again, I think of most innovation opportunities are at the fringes and you have to figure out where the fringes are. Most of the time when people give it a one, it's that they were trying to use it for something it wasn't designed for.

Bob: [11:11] Like there's going to be a one because of poor quality, right? I expected it to work ... But a lot of times people say, "Yeah, I expected it to do this but it didn't work for that." They still give it a one so part of it is can I find new situations or new contexts where people are trying to use it and it doesn't work that I can actually build something new or something specific for that area?

Katie: [11:33] Interesting. All right.

Bob: [11:35] So that's what I do for a living. Everyday, I interview people and find new opportunities to actually figure out how to actually design either new products, new services, everyday. Non-consumption is literally part of my everyday life.

Katie: [11:49] Have there been any examples that come to mind that were very surprising for you? Or are they pretty much expected?

Bob: [11:57] They're not surprising but I think the notion is it's like one of those things where you didn't realize how emotional. For example, the banking business.

Bob: [12:05] The notion of most people talk about banking as being the most boring thing in the world and so low but the reality is when somebody switches a bank, it's extremely emotional, especially from a company perspective because you have to change everything.

Bob: [12:18] You have to reapply. It's just a massive, massive process. The notion is if you look at how many people wanna switch banks but don't, it's actually very, very large. They just actually don't believe anybody's any better and they don't know- They think the process is too hard.

Bob: [12:37] It's just one of those things where you didn't expect to find how many people were dissatisfied, but how many people tolerated just poor service in the banking-

Katie: [12:44] It's like half dependency once you start down the path with one bank.

Bob: [12:47] Exactly. Well, the other one I did recently was around mattresses and you just found that the number of people and how to decide what mattress to buy and the anxiety and the language that they use at the store and how you feel so uncomfortable trying to figure out which mattress to pick.

Bob: [13:07] There's just huge opportunity in that space too 'cause how many people want a new mattress but are just afraid to go buy it? Same kind of thing.

Katie: [13:14] Yeah, that's a good point.

Bob: [13:17] I think the other part to me is non-consumption is buried in everyday life. It's not called out in any exception. It's literally you have to dig for it and you have to find it but typically it's right in front of us and the moment that you find it, you kinda look at it and you ask ten people about it and all of the sudden, you realize oh my gosh, everybody has this problem.

Bob: [13:37] It's typically that kind of thing. It's fun to find really good non-consumption moments.

Katie: [13:42] Well, thank you for your insights.

Bob: [13:43] Thank you.

Katie: [13:44] Do you have any final words of wisdom or tips for people targeting non-consumption?

Bob: [13:48] No, no. I just say just keep finding the struggling moments and to be honest, I think the notion of creating struggling moments for your customer so they can actually make progress is another way in which to kind of help motivate people to kind of move upmarket. I think, to me, it's just struggling moments is the key to almost everything in innovation. I would say struggling moment is the seed for all innovation.